What is the best way to handle high call volume from direct mail?

[Joseph Theriault]

What is the best way to handle high call volume from direct mail? Whenever I do a mailing I get swamped with calls and things fall through the cracks. Does anyone use a VA or answering service? Maybe dragon the speech software? Anyone with any advice would be helpful.

[Josh Caldwell]

The dragon speach software sucks, dont go there.

There are two reasonable options that come to mind.  This is assuming that you have already realized that a voice mail isnt good enough, and you will lose a lot of sellers because they wont leave a message.

Option 1 is an answering service.   There are a few decent ones out there, but you have to realize that the people answering the phone have minimal training and can only be trusted to handle a few tasks at a time.  So you are limited to capturing their name, phone, email and address

Option 2 and the one that I use is to hire a virtual assistant or VA. A VA is more professional and can be trained to do whatever you want them to do as far as taking incomming phone calls. I use a google voice number and forward it to my VA. The VA only gets paid when she is working for me, no breaks, vacations, or healthcare, so the price is much better than hiring someone to work in my office. The best part is that you can train you VA to do pretty much the same job of pre-screening the people who call as you would do.

I hope that helps, feel free to ask me questions if I didnt cover something

Josh